Withington · M20
The lock on an HMO bedroom door is a fire safety item.
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- 20-30 min from Salford
- HMO compliant locks
- From £35 per door
- Invoiced accounts
- DBS checked
Withington is full of Victorian and Edwardian houses that were built for one family and now hold six people who have never met. That conversion brings a set of rules most landlords learn about from an inspector rather than from a locksmith, and the bedroom door lock is right in the middle of them.
The rule that catches people
Every bedroom door in a licensed HMO is normally a fire door, and a fire door on an escape route has a hard requirement: the occupant must be able to get out without a key.
Which means the lock has to lock from the outside to give the tenant privacy and security, and open from the inside with a thumbturn or a simple lever, no key, no thinking, in smoke, in the dark.
Right
Thumbturn inside, key outside. Tenant locks their room, and can always walk out of it even if the key is in a coat downstairs. £45-80.
Wrong
Key both sides. A tenant asleep at 3am with a fire on the landing has to find a key. Fails inspection. Genuinely dangerous.
Also wrong
A padlock and hasp bolted on by a previous landlord. We see this. It is not a lock, it is a liability.
Also wrong
No lock at all. Tenants then fit their own, badly, and now the fire door has a hole in it and its rating is gone.
The self-closer nobody keeps
Fire doors in HMOs need to close on their own. Tenants hate them, wedge them open with a shoe, and the whole compartmentation strategy stops existing. That is not a lock problem and we will still tell you about it, because the inspector will. See door closers.
Do not drill an HMO bedroom door
A fire door is certified as an assembly: the leaf, the intumescent strip, the closer, the ironmongery. Cut the wrong hole in it, or fit a lock it was never tested with, and the certification is gone for that door.
That matters when there is a fire and somebody asks who fitted it. We use locks rated for fire doors and we fit them to the manufacturer's spec, and if what you have asked for would break the certification we will say so rather than take the money.
And the front door, same as everywhere
Six tenants, twelve months, kiosk copies. Change the cylinder between tenancies. £35-60 per door, or a master key system so you carry one key and each tenant opens only their own room. See also Fallowfield for the July changeover.
What it costs
| Job | Price |
|---|---|
| HMO bedroom lock, thumbturn, fire-rated | £45-80 |
| Master key system, per room | £45-75 |
| Front door cylinder change | £35-60 |
| Front and back keyed alike | £70-110 |
| Door closer, supplied and fitted | £65-140 |
| Lockout, non-destructive | £65-110 |
| Survey before a licensing inspection | £45-75 |
Around here
Questions people actually ask
What kind of lock can I put on an HMO bedroom door?
One that locks from the outside with a key and opens from the inside without one. Every bedroom door in a licensed HMO is normally a fire door on an escape route, and the rule there is absolute: the occupant must be able to get out without a key, in smoke, in the dark, half asleep. So you want a thumbturn or a simple lever on the inside face and a key on the outside. That is £45 to £80 fitted. A key-both-sides lock on an HMO bedroom door fails inspection and is genuinely dangerous.
Can I just put a padlock and hasp on a tenant's bedroom door?
No, and we see them. A padlock and hasp is not a lock on a fire door, it is a liability: it needs a key from inside, it is not rated for a fire door assembly, and bolting it on has usually already breached the door's certification. If a tenant needs to secure their room, fit a proper fire-rated lock with a thumbturn inside. It costs £45 to £80 and it is the difference between passing an inspection and explaining yourself after a fire.
Will fitting a lock invalidate my HMO fire door?
It can, and this is the bit landlords are rarely told. A fire door is certified as a whole assembly: the leaf, the intumescent strip, the closer and the ironmongery, tested together. Cut the wrong hole in it or fit a lock it was never tested with and the certification for that door is gone. We use locks rated for fire doors and fit them to the manufacturer's spec. If what you have asked for would break the rating, we will tell you rather than do it and take the money.
My tenants keep wedging the fire doors open. Is that my problem?
Yes, and the inspector will treat it as yours. Fire doors in an HMO have to close on their own, which is why they have self-closers, and a door wedged open with a shoe means the compartmentation strategy the whole building relies on has stopped existing. It is not strictly a lock problem, but we will tell you about it when we see it, because it is the single most common thing that fails an inspection and it is the cheapest to fix.
What's the difference between a Withington HMO and a Fallowfield student house?
Practically, licensing and fire doors. Fallowfield is dominated by whole houses let to a group who all know each other, and the big issue is the annual changeover and the number of keys in circulation. Withington has more houses converted room by room and let to people who have never met, which usually means an HMO licence, fire doors on every bedroom, self-closers, and locks that have to satisfy an inspector rather than just a tenant. Different rules, same street, ten minutes apart.